Sinister Strangers

Chapter Two – In Shreds-1

Chapter Two – In Shreds

Keri knew that Alan’s love for her had died. Worse than that, it had not died of neglect or boredom. She had murdered it.

True, the honeymoon period had been unexpectedly brief. After only weeks of marriage he had thrown himself back into his work with an enthusiasm he had never displayed in the bedroom. All of her attempts to rekindle the flame had died for lack of fuel. An objective assessment of her charms, (corroborated by friends close enough to be truthful) had led Keri to the sad conclusion that Alan simply had little interest in s*x. He loved to surprise her with gifts when she least expected them. He wasn’t stingy with affectionate displays or endearing words, and all of her other needs were met; yet somehow the demon that drives most men seemed to have been exorcised from Alan’s loins.

Or was it her own feigned responses that had done it? She had met his occasional displays of interest with all the enthusiasm she could muster, submitting eagerly to his cues and giving more of herself than he asked. He had been a gentle and considerate lover, though not inventive. Yet she knew that he was aware of a coolness in her passion, a sense of failure and despair even as she convulsed with orgasm under him.

He had handled the situation the way that workaholics usually do, evading his personal problems by immersing himself in the part of his life that still brought satisfaction and focusing on puzzles that were at least soluble. He had always been a conservative sort, concerned with financial security more than emotional harmony. He wasn’t stingy, but he lived more modestly than he needed to. If he sometimes failed to express his emotions, it wasn’t because he was unfeeling. It was because he lacked the words.

For a time, she had suspected infidelity. One night, when he was working late again, she manufactured an excuse to drop in at the office unannounced. She found him working earnestly, attended by an assistant old enough to be her mother, and didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

She had considered taking a job for a while, not because they needed the money. She thought of doing charity work or becoming politically active, but the matrons who seek such refuge often grow bitter and become a nuisance. She couldn’t imagine being one of them.

A dark need gnawed her soul. She had hoped that marriage would end it. For a time, she had even convinced herself that it had, but in the nights it returned to taunt her. She began to leave deliberate clues where Alan would find them, hoping that discovery might prompt a frank discussion of her lack. Alan was so good at taking care of difficulties at work; perhaps he could help her through this emotional crisis. Even if a cure proved impossible, he might at least offer understanding and empathy.

He was oblivious to her hints, or chose to be. Eventually, frustration and emptiness drove her to commit disgraceful and deceptive acts. She constantly relived the moment when Alan came into the bedroom and discovered her, the look of pain on his face, his swift retreat, and the silence that followed.

The silence continued still. They spoke only of trivialities now, in funereal tones. He was polite and she was anxious, fearing that bottled emotion might lead to some sort of explosion. She knew that Alan was not a man to evade a problem or ignore a defect. It wasn’t like him to pretend that nothing had ever happened. Yet, faced with this threat to their marriage, Alan apparently chose to retreat. He would read himself to sleep every night, while she turned away so that he would not see her weeping silently.

Even in her despair, watered by tears and nurtured by newfound loneliness, the dark need grew. Shame could not stunt it.

Alan kept a small woodshop in the basement. His friends always kidded him about it, because he seldom entered the room. He had once confessed that he didn’t even know how to operate some of his power tools. After “that night”, however, he began to spend a great deal of time there. Half of the basement had been partitioned off years ago, but Alan installed a steel door into the wall and fitted it with a deadbolt lock. He insulated the wall to deaden sound. Even the roar of his power saws was reduced to a distant whine. It wasn’t noise that kept Keri awake when he worked late. When she asked timidly if she might see some of his work, he only muttered awkwardly that he had produced nothing worth putting on display. She let him change the subject.

When curiosity drove her to look in the basement, she found the door locked. During the weeks that followed, packages arrived. He took them unopened to the basement and said nothing about them. She began to feel like Bluebeard’s wife, and chided herself for her jealousy and suspicion.

Obviously, the fact that he was hiding away a part of his life that was significant to him was just another symptom of the gulf that she had opened between them.

She battled depression, becoming compulsive about house cleaning at the same time that she neglected her personal grooming. She seldom left the house anymore and Alan often came home to find her wearing the same ratty bathrobe she had thrown on in the morning. He must have noticed, but he only remarked that she really ought to buy a new robe. “That thing is in shreds,” he said. In shreds, she thought, like her life.

Such was the state of her mind on the morning of her twenty-fifth birthday.

She woke that day feeling out of sorts, not sick, but filled with the physical symptoms self absorption causes. She showered automatically and started to dress. Why bother? she thought. The old robe was her sartorial selection for another day.

Alan was uncharacteristically cheerful and full of small talk at breakfast, but it was the sort of false heartiness one brings to a hospital and offers to a terminal patient. Keri tried to respond in kind. She didn’t want to seem sulky, and it wasn’t fair to punish Alan for her sin. Conversations came a little easier lately, now that they had an unspoken agreement not to talk about “that night.”

“Are you going out today?” he asked, with what she thought was too much casualness.

“No,” she said guardedly. “I’ll probably stay home and try to clean up this dump.” She encompassed the spotless house with a languid wave of her arm. She was waiting for a lecture, a warning that hiding in the house wasn’t good for her. Any day now he might recommend counseling.

No, that would mean talking about “that night.” It would be easier for both of them to stand apart while she sank into the quicksand. There was no point in going down together.

He ignored her defensive tone, nodded at her answer, and returned to his barrage of chatter. Keri decided that he was trying to distract her. Maybe he was having an affair after all. Maybe he had simply given up on her.

When he suddenly made a show of looking at his watch and grabbing his briefcase, she was startled by his haste. At the door, he turned and looked at her for a long moment. She had followed him to the door, sensing that he was more than usually uneasy. He planted a shy peck on her cheek. “It will all be better soon.” He promised. She almost laughed. It was the sort of vague reassurance one might offer to a frightened child. Adults knew better. Some things will never be better, ever. Yet, there was something strange in his eyes. It wasn’t the forgiveness she had been praying for. It almost seemed that he was in need of absolution too.

At least she understood his haste. Depressed people are depressing to be around, and he didn’t want to stay home a minute longer than he had to; yet he felt obliged to show concern. Maybe at some level, he really was worried about her. What did he think? Did he expect her to swallow the contents of the medicine chest as soon as he was gone?

“I’ll be fine,” she said cheerfully. “Don’t be late. I’ll fix something special.”

Even that hint was not enough. He stared at her a moment longer, distracted with a vague anxiety, then wheeled suddenly and was out the door. When his car was out of sight, Keri sat with her chin in her hand, staring at the breakfast dishes and listening to the refrigerator. “Happy Birthday, Keri,” she said to the room.

She felt a sudden need to talk to someone, anyone, but her few friends had grown distant as her depression progressed. Alan had moved her from the pleasant sub- division where she had been raised to this country estate. It was beautiful, secure, and unendurably lonely. Her nearest neighbors lived so far away that Keri had never even met them.

She stared out the window across the empty fields to the distant hardwoods. They were still black and bare against the sky, but reddening now with the first promise of new leaf. It was April twenty third. He had forgotten, or no longer cared.

The doorbell rang.

She stood to answer it, wondering who it could be. She glanced down to discover that her bathrobe was open and all of her charms displayed. She hastily tied it shut.

The woman at the door was tall, much taller than the petite Keri. She appeared to be about forty years old, fit and well groomed in a gray suit. Her intelligent blue eyes hardly softened as she flashed the false smile of a professional salesperson. She carried a large, black display case under her arm.

“Oh Honey!” she said sympathetically, “Do you need a makeover or what?”

Keri stood up straight. “Excuse me?” If this was a saleswoman, her approach was unorthodox. Keri was usually an easy mark for sales people, not because she liked to buy things, but because she found it hard to refuse them. Today she just didn’t want to hear it. “Whatever you are selling,” she said wearily, “I’m not interested.”

“I’m not selling anything,” the woman said hastily, as the door began to close. “I have a gift for you.”

Sure, thought Keri, a free gift, only nineteen ninety five for shipping and handling, accessories sold separately. She hesitated though. It was her Birthday, after all. Maybe this was legitimate.

“What do you have?” asked Keri.

“Magic.”

“I don’t believe in magic anymore.”

There was a feral gleam in the woman’s eye that intrigued and frightened Keri. “Ah! But you should,” the woman said. “Last week I changed a woman’s whole life.”

“How?”

“For the better, of course.”

Keri squinted, trying to concentrate on a conversation that had somehow left her behind. The simplest thing, she thought, was to end it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and tried to close the door, only to find a foot in the way.

“A few minutes of your time,” said the woman. “After that, your life will never be the same.”

Keri looked up, a trifle afraid. The woman snared her eyes and held them in the grip of an ice blue stare. Was it Keri’s cowardice, or curiosity? Was it the strange power of the woman’s intimidating presence? Was Keri yielding to a fatalistic resignation, or a psychic command? She could not have said.

Thinking that only fools expected anything but disappointments from life, Keri stepped back and opened the door.

The bright gold bracelets on her wrists reflected Keri’s face back at her. She brushed stray hair out of her eyes, suddenly embarrassed at how she had let herself go. The woman sat across from her, sipping coffee. Keri had invited her in, or she had simply entered. She had shown the woman to a chair, or the woman had told her to sit. However it was, Keri rolled the desk chair away from the computer table and swiveled it around to face the rocker that the woman occupied. Keri noticed that her robe had slipped down, baring one shoulder, and hastily adjusted it, suddenly reminded that she was naked under her tattered robe. I ought to excuse myself and get dressed she thought, as she sat down.

The woman extended one leg casually, and Keri felt the firm flesh of a nylon- clad calf pressing against her bare leg. She started to draw away from the contact, but the woman raised one finely drawn eyebrow and smiled. The expression in her eyes conveyed more irony than apology, and had the force of a command. Keri relaxed her leg and allowed the touch

She is using Jedi mind tricks on me! Keri thought, laughing inwardly at the absurdity of her fear. Yet her voice had quavered as she spoke to the woman, and her hand had trembled as she served the woman a cup of coffee that hadn’t been asked for. How did Keri know that cream and sugar were unnecessary?

“Thank you,” said the woman, accepting the cup with cool grace. She seemed slightly amused by Keri, and not at all surprised, as though this hospitality were simple tribute, only her expected due.

The bracelets emerged gleaming from her sample case shortly after the woman sat down. Keri hardly heard the sales pitch, if that was what it could be called. She wasn’t even sure what the woman’s stock in trade was. The woman babbled on about enhancement, enrichment, and fulfillment, the words a meaningless blur. It was her eyes that spoke directly to Keri.

I know, they said. I understand. I can help. She toyed with the bracelets as she spoke, idly, twirling one in a sliver of sunlight just above Keri’s eyes.

“Aren’t they beautiful? You should try them on.”

Keri wasn’t even aware of the precise moment when she extended her arms and watched as the bracelets were clasped around her wrists.

“They are very pretty,” Keri murmured. “They look like…” she almost said “shackles,” but was frightened by what that word might reveal about her. Perhaps no one else saw the world the way that she did. She felt like the man in the old joke who insists that his doctor is showing him pornographic inkblots. Don’t tell me I’m sexually obsessed, Doc. You drew those dirty pictures!

“Barbarian ornaments,” she said finally.

In fact, they did look like shackles, wide and thick with heavy hinges and clasps. Four rings dangled at the compass points of each bracelet, places to hang charms perhaps. Keri squirmed in her chair, made restive by emotions she refused to identify. Ninny! She admonished herself silently. She was suddenly desperate to have them off. With mounting irritation, she struggled for several moments to open the catches. A vague and swiftly growing sense of alarm threatened to spoil the easy dream she had fallen into. She quieted it with a deep breath and held out her wrists.

“Can you help me with these? I don’t seem to be able to…”

The woman smiled, displaying the quiet power that Keri was already beginning to find attractive. The emotion confused her, since she had never felt anything s****l for another woman.

“Shush! Leave them for now. We have magic to work first.”

Keri felt a chill in her spine that had been forgotten with childhood. Magic! It always worked in the stories. Why couldn’t she make things right again by believing hard enough? Wasn’t Tinker Bell saved by a simple assertion of faith?

The woman rose and strolled to the window, where she stood looking out briefly before closing the blinds. Keri watched curiously.

“What should I do?” Keri asked.

The woman turned. “What you need is a simple ceremony of transition, an end to old ways of seeing and doing. You hate what you have become, but you cannot change without help.”

Keri nodded, feeling a trifle disappointed. For a moment she had dared to hope. Now it seemed that this mysterious stranger was simply another charismatic new age charlatan.

“Cross your fingers and close your eyes,” ordered the woman.

She didn’t say Simon says thought Keri, obeying anyway. She sensed the woman moving behind her. When hands touched her head, she stiffened with surprise. The hands seemed unusually hot.

“Relax,” cooed the woman. “You’re full of negative energy. We have to release it.” She massaged Keri’s neck, and the girl began to let go of her tension.

“Ummm! Is this the magic?”

“Soon now. Wishes are like secret prayers. You make public prayers with your hands before you. Secret prayers are made with the hands hidden. Place your hands behind you and clasp your fingers together. Wish your greatest wish.”

Keri’s first thought was that wishing for the impossible was a waste of time and energy. Then she told herself that her greatest wish was for the love and forgiveness that Alan refused her. Yet the image that arrived unsummoned was one resurrected from childhood. A picture she had studied until it was burned into her mind. She had believed it was long buried and forgotten.

Keri leaned forward in her chair and put her hands behind her back, lacing her fingers together. She would humor this woman, she thought, if only to prolong the wonderful sensation of those hands kneading her neck.

“Wish hard,” the woman whispered in her ear, as the hands stroked slowly down the length of Keri’s arms.

It was a small sound that Keri heard behind her, a tiny ratclaw sound that grated her nerves like teeth against bone, a sound she recognized from half remembered dreams.

A padlock clicking shut.

Keri knew, even before she tried to separate her hands, that they were linked together behind her.

“Hey!” she protested weakly. She wanted her voice to convey outrage, but the squeak that emerged was an odd combination of meek pleading and awakening lust.

“Don’t act surprised,” purred the woman. “Isn’t this what you wished for?”

“Let me go or I’ll scream!” Keri hissed through clenched teeth.

“Go ahead. No one can hear you.”

It was true, Keri knew, but she screamed anyway, releasing panic. Tugging at her cuffed hands only revealed something she already suspected. Her hands were linked around the metal support of the chair’s backrest. She couldn’t even stand up to run without dragging the chair along with her.

The woman covered her ears to shut out the screams, while Keri emptied her lungs and whooped them full of air to scream again. Tired at last of the noise, the woman reached into her display case and took something out. Keri recognized it immediately. She had never seen a real one, only pictures in magazines. It was a ball gag.

Keri pursed her lips and turned her head aside. The woman just grinned. She moved fast for such a large woman, landing astride Keri’s chest and knocking the wind from her lungs. She pinched Keri’s nose between thumb and forefinger. Struggling only increased Keri’s need for air. When she opened her mouth with a gasp, the woman forced the ball between Keri’s teeth, stretching her mouth around the gag, and buckled it in place.

Keri never saw where the stiletto came from. It snicked open close to her face.

“You need to hold very still now,” admonished the woman. “You don’t want me to cut you, do you?”

Keri shook her head vigorously, trying to communicate with widened eyes just how much she wanted to remain alive and whole. She closed them as the point of the knife lingered near her cheek before sliding down her neck. The woman took hold of the robe’s lapel and drew it taut across Keri’s throat, insinuating the blade under it. Keri felt the icy edge along her shoulder and whimpered.

“I have a message from your husband,” the woman whispered in her ear.

With one swift motion, the blade slashed through the worn fabric, splitting the sleeve from collar to cuff.

“He loves you very much.”